


Come What May

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [26]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Emotional, F/M, Feelings Realization, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Pining, Pregnancy, Return to Nevarro, Revelations, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25464661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: He's so lost in his musings his heart skips a beat when he looks up and spots her sitting on a rock a few feet from him, her perfect profile painted in gold by the sunlight.She's watching the skyline – smiling, he realises as he approaches. She looks so relaxed and serene, so peaceful...“Cara?”Her eyes go wide. For a moment she doesn't move, then, slowly, she starts turning to him and the smile resurfaces on her lips.She's so beautiful it's like a punch to Din's stomach.He observes her as she stands up with more effort than normally necessary. He can't take his eyes off her face: she's not just beautiful, she's evenmorebeautiful than he remembered, radiant as the sun setting behind her.“You're back,” she breathes.The movement of her hand distracts Din's attention from her face and his breath catches when he sees where it's going to rest.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709416
Comments: 20
Kudos: 124





	Come What May

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mandalorianess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mandalorianess/gifts).



> This is what happens when I stumble into inspiring CaraDin posts on IG. Forgive the lame title, my brain is tired. 😧

Din was away for less than five months, a window of time seemingly too short to produce so much change in the place that was once his home, transforming it into a pleasant, flourishing town. Then again, a lot of changes have happened in his life, too.

He left the child to the care of Master Skywalker and his students only two weeks ago and he already feels like he lacks a purpose, now. So much has changed since he met the green baby, and without him and his huge brown eyes everything suddenly feels empty.

All Din has left is here, on Nevarro: his old life, the old Covert, a couple of friends, Cara.

_Cara._

They've kept in touch through these months. Not long after Din left with the child, Cara ended of of their calls with a mysterious line he didn't dwell too much upon.

_'When you get back, I have a surprise for you.'_

Din chalked it up to her new career as an enforcer, perhaps the possibility of her becoming a bounty hunter, as Greef had suggested when Cara decided to stay on Nevarro.

He heads to the cantina, confident he'll find Greef and Cara there. He only finds Greef, who welcomes him with a heavy pat on his shoulder and a thunderous laughter that Din cannot quite place.

“My dear boy, at long last! It's good to have you back! So much has happened in your absence, you'll see!”

Din ignored the patrons' curious gazes and politely disentangled himself from under Greef's arm.

“Have you seen Cara?”

“She always has a walk at sunset,” says Greef with a twinkle in his look, “just outside the West Gate.”

“A walk?”

Din is more than slightly puzzled: he never pegged Cara as the sort of person to take a stroll to relax at the end of a long day.

“Doctor's orders,” explains Greef with a wink Din doesn't know what to do with.

He's about to inquire further about it, but Greef gets called to the bar and quickly excuses himself before Din can open his mouth.

What is _'doctor's orders'_ supposed to mean? Did she get injured and didn't tell him? It's not exactly the sort of thing one would refer to a _surprise._

He heads west and finds the planes outside the town bathed in beautiful oranges and purples. The fresh breeze swipes the land as the sun idly sets behind the mountain crest along the horizon.

Din has no idea which direction to take, so he just starts walking, head swirling with questions and doubts.

He came to talk to Cara, but about what? How time brought clarity to him and made him realise the two nights they shared together – the one on Sorgan and the one on the Razor Crest – meant more than he was willing to admit at the time? He doesn't even know if she feels the same. For all he knows, she might have moved on and found someone else. Din couldn't even blame her.

He's so lost in his musings his heart skips a beat when he looks up and spots her sitting on a rock a few feet from him, her perfect profile painted in gold by the sunlight.

She's watching the skyline – smiling, he realises as he approaches. She looks so relaxed and serene, so peaceful...

“Cara?”

Her eyes go wide. For a moment she doesn't move, then, slowly, she starts turning to him and the smile resurfaces on her lips.

She's so beautiful it's like a punch to Din's stomach.

He observes her as she stands up with more effort than normally necessary. He can't take his eyes off her face: she's not just beautiful, she's even _more_ beautiful than he remembered, radiant as the sun setting behind her.

“You're back,” she breathes.

The movement of her hand distracts Din's attention from her face and his breath catches when he sees where it's going to rest.

He hadn't noticed her armour is missing, and it's quite blatant why: her abdomen is so round it could never fit under her thick battle garments.

Din blinks, glad that his helmet is protecting his dignity by concealing his dropping jaw.

The drum of his heart is deafening in his ears. Does this mean he's too late?

“What happened?” he asks in a choked whisper that makes Cara giggle.

“What do you think, dummy?” She eloquently rubs her hand under her swollen belly. “Special cargo on board.”

Din finds himself smiling along with her, infected and slightly bewildered by her apparent happiness.

“You look... round,” he babbles, unable to put together anything more clever.

“Yeah,” she grins proudly, “it popped around the fifteenth week.”

Din's mind frantically starts doing some math: he left about five months ago, which makes roughly twenty-one weeks. It's unlikely but not impossible that he... that he's...

“How far along are you?” he asks, throat so dry every word hurts. He should skip the vague questions and go for the direct ones, instead, but he doesn't know what he would do if she said this is someone else's child.

He couldn't blame her, of course, but he couldn't forgive himself, either, for leaving without telling her how he felt about her.

But Cara is looking at him like she knows exactly what he's thinking and her grin is growing warmer.

“Remember that steamy night on the Crest before we got here?” she says with a mischievous tilt in her head.

He remembers, of course he does. How could he forget? He and Cara putting the child to sleep and then sitting on the floor for hours, talking and talking until words became kisses and kisses became moans stifled into each other's necks.

His lips spread into a smile as the implication of what Cara just told him starts to sink in.

He looks down at the soft roundness of Cara's belly and tries to picture the small life growing inside it, warm and safe and fiercely protected.

“It's mine?”

There is so much disbelief in his voice it brings a shade of something like pity to Cara's face.

“I told you I had a surprise,” she says, taking a step closer. Din doesn't move, doesn't speak. He isn't even sure he's still breathing.

“Won't you say anything?” she murmurs, eyes falling to the ground. Her tone is different, almost guarded.

Din wasn't mentally prepared to face this. It's not unwanted but it's unexpected and he fears he might say the wrong thing and give her the wrong idea.

“I'm... trying to process.”

“Hey,” Cara touches his arm and he nearly jumps, “if you want an out, you got it.”

Din only half registers what she's suggesting. He's too busy staring at her middle in something he could only describe as awe. His rationality is fighting to remind him this is going to be a problem at some point, that neither he nor Cara know anything about babies. The child Din just left with Skywalker was already mostly self-sufficient and required minimum efforts. A newborn is a whole different business.

The more he thinks about it, however, the more he realises he doesn't care.

“How can you say that?”

He can't keep a hint of anger from his voice, something he regrets instantly when Cara responds with a mild laugh that proves once again how well she knows him.

“Your life isn't exactly kid-friendly,” she argues.

“And yours is?”

Cara sets her chin and puts on a resolute expression.

“I'm doing my best to adjust to the situation. It hasn't been easy but... I swear I'm trying.”

A wave of fondness washes over Din. She's been facing everything alone so far: if he admired her for her strength and stubbornness before, now he cannot possibly deny any longer than this is not simple admiration.

“Why didn't you just tell me?” he can't help asking. He feels this isn't the sort of news she'd want to break through a holocall but he had a right to know. Unless...

“You would have come back for us,” she says, voicing what his mind has barely started realising, “and your mission with the kid was too important.”

Her hand runs around the mound of her belly – instinctively, Din guesses with a smile. He wonders when she started doing this, how she picked it up... She must have felt so alone and scared, all these months, dealing with something so huge all by herself. If anything had happened to her or the baby while he was away...

Din's train of thoughts stumbles and crumbles on that single, little word.

_Baby._

There _is_ a baby in there. _Their_ baby.

He has no idea how they're going to squeeze this whole new person into their lives but he knows that, like all parents, they will figure it out as they go.

“I missed so much,” he sighs as his head hangs helplessly. It was not his fault and he couldn't have possibly known, but guilt still nibbles at his conscience.

Cara breaks into a light-hearted laugh that melts most of Din's worry away.

“Not that much,” she promises. “Just a lot of puking and some wild mood swings. Ask Greef, he still treats me like a ticking bomb.”

Despite knowing he had a duty toward the kid and finding his people was of paramount importance, a selfish part of Din still knows it would have been good for all of them to be together in this. The kid would be so puzzled by seeing Cara like this, he chuckles to himself.

Maybe he _will_ see her.

Din glances down longingly at her belly, burning with curiosity and ferocious affection. He's also bursting with pride, but he'll put off this confession to another moment. Cara looks already smug enough, anyway.

“Can I-” he begins, rising his hands tentatively. Without a real answer, Cara just takes his hands and presses them to her stomach.

“It's _your_ special cargo, too.”

For a split second, Din's senses are overwhelmed by two sensations: warmth and softness. Everything feels calm under his palms; he can make out something by dipping his fingertips into Cara's tender skin, vague shapes he can't really identify but that still make him feel strangely giddy.

“It's not moving,” he says after a while.

“I think he's asleep,” says Cara, feeling here and there around Din's hands.

“ _He?”_

Cara smiles, biting her lower lip with a shrug.

“It's something about the shape of the belly, or so the ladies in town say.”

Din smirks. He can't quite picture Cara surrounded by the women of the village handing out pregnancy tips and recommendations, but he would love to see that. He's glad to hear she wasn't completely alone in this.

“Is everything okay?” he whispers, almost absently, still too mesmerised by what he's feeling beneath his palms. “With both of you?” he adds, glancing up at her.

One of Cara's hands comes up to cup the side of his helmet.

“I would have told you if anything had been wrong.”

He nods. Her thumb strokes the beskar upon his cheek. He could kill right now to feel this caress upon his skin.

“We need to talk about this,” he sighs. There is so much to talk about it's going to take days, if not weeks, before they catch up with everything. The kid and the Jedi school, and _this._ _Surprise_ sounds too much like an euphemism, now.

He bends his head until his forehead meets Cara's, the last rays of the setting sun breaching through the thin gap between them.

“I guess we do,” says Cara as her eyes close.

This would be a perfect moment to kiss her.

Any moment would be a perfect moment to kiss her.

They're going to have to talk about this, too.

He has just wrapped his arms around her when he hears her stomach grumble. Cara starts giggling against his chest.

“Dinner first?” he proposes.

“Dinner first,” she agrees. “Then you can tell me about the kid and his new friends, and I can tell you about the other kid.”

“Deal.”

They walk back in town together in silence. When he takes her hand, she beams up at him and stands a little closer.

“I'm expected back at the Jedi school in a few weeks,” he conveys. He holds his breath for a moment, the finally blurts out the question he's been pondering since the very moment he left, five months ago.

“Will you come with me?”

Cara kicks a rock away, lifting a cloud of dust.

“I don't know,” she mumbles wistfully.

Din's heart stops before she looks up with a defiant chuckle.

“I might not fit through the ramp door in a few weeks.”

He lets out a little laugh of relief.

He'll take it as a yes.

**Author's Note:**

> This entire oneshot was inspired by [this post on IG](https://www.instagram.com/p/CC6_XQWA96c/?igshid=fkbwnk0a0k59). Big big thanks to [mandalorianess](https://mandalorianess.tumblr.com/post/624346253130694656/as-you-wished-this-is-for-you) for her beautiful CaraDin edits, in particular this one, which is literally this whole fic:
> 
> Thank you so much to every single one of you for your constant support and encouragement! Keep the love coming. ❤


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